下川研究室

Research overview

My research aims to clarify the causal mechanisms behind and to develop solutions for various food-related social issues, ranging from hunger to climate change. I specialize in the field of agricultural economics and explore the interactions among food, poverty, health, energy, and the environment.

I have analyzed the consequences of food-related policies such as food safety labels, dietary guidelines for the environment, dietary education for obesity prevention, and food price subsidies for the poor, by incorporating concepts from behavioral economics.

More recently, I have been exploring potential social mechanisms that facilitate the achievement of more sustainable food and agriculture systems. I am particularly interested in issues concerning consumer acceptance and demand, technological innovation, energy systems, and decarbonization within the food and agriculture systems in Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. To this end, my recent research actively engages in collaborations with relevant companies and researchers across different disciplines.  

Current Projects

  • We aim to explore the potential of cricket farming as a secondary source of income to improve the dietary and economic conditions of poor households. While cricket farming is widely recognized as an environmentally friendly protein source, it also holds great potential as a poverty alleviation strategy. We will focus on cricket farming in Cambodia, one of the poorest countries known for its high prevalence of insect consumption and many households engaged in secondary employment. These characteristics make Cambodia an ideal case for our project.

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  • We aim to explore the potential of solar power usage for dairy farming that has a high dependence on electricity. Using 30-minute interval electricity consumption data from farmers in Ibaraki Prefecture, we will reveal their electricity consumption patterns and the relationship between electricity consumption and milk quality and quantity across different farm sizes.

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  • ESG engagement among unlisted firms has been hardly examined due to data limitations, which is problematic for the agri-food industry that has significant impacts on the environment and consists mostly of unlisted firms. Thus, by constructing a unique data set of 525 unlisted firms in Japan’s food supply chain sectors from 2018 to 2024, we investigate the patterns of ESG engagement and its association with economic performance across the upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors.

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Past Projects